A discussion site for folks interested in improving the quality of medical laboratories. Most will be the thoughts and vents of a long time player in the medical laboratory quality from many perspectives, complex and basic laboratories, developed and developing countries, research and new knowledge.

Featured Post

Healthcare Customer Satisfaction: More Talk AND More Action Customer satisfaction (Voice of the customer) is a recurrent th...

Friday, October 7, 2016

Conference Report: The laboratory and customer satisfaction

Program
Office for Laboratory Quality Management (POLQM) hosted a successful conference/workshop
on Customer Satisfaction and the Medical Laboratory.

Business and industry are very
much aware of the importance of listening to and responding their customers’
needs and requirements.It is not only
good business practice and consistent alignment with international
standardization (ISO9001:2015 Quality Management requirements, it makes
powerful business sense.You can call
this customer-focus or customer-centric. but business understands that
nothing will kill off a business faster than having a large herd of unhappy
people who prefer to go elsewhere for their goods and services needs.

Healthcare in general, and Medical
laboratories in particular are now slowly getting aligned with the same mindset.In some countries, the final argument is too
compelling to ignore.The unhappy
customer is apt to “sue you into the stone age”.

That may not apply so much in Canada, but at
least in Canada we can drag the industry forward through mandatory
accreditation.(I really don't like using accreditation as a club, but sometimes you have to make folks understand that this is something they have to do.)

For medical laboratories in
Canada, the accreditation requirement (ISO15189:2012 medical laboratories –
requirements for quality and competence), has become pretty much a national
requirement and an effective approach to introduce process change on customer needs.

On October 5, 2016 we (the UBC
Program Office for Laboratory Quality Management or POLQM) hosted a one-day
conference/workshop on listening to laboratory customers in the medical
laboratory. Topics covered included defining who are our customers, capturing
their opinions (including complaints, concerns, comments and compliments) and
monitoring satisfaction as a Quality Indicator,Speakers included experts from the American Society for Quality, private
sector laboratories, public sector health authorities, accreditation bodies,
and quality educators, and the new BC Agency for Pathology and Laboratory
Medicine.The participants were all from
Canada from Victoria to Toronto and as far north as the Yukon Territories, and from
a wide variety of programs and facilities.

From my (clearly biased and
vested) opinion the day went very well.Most attenders were Quality Managers or Quality Leads or folks in senior
positions.While it was clear that folks
came were there to support their per-existing mindset.As best as I could tell there were no skeptics in the crowd, but perhaps if they were there they were too intimidated
to speak up (That can sometimes happen).

There were some great ideas
raised; some stood out.

There are lots of ways to address focusing on
the customer.Maybe some are better
than others, but don’t over plan.Pick
one and get going.

Laboratories have a way of thinking they know
what their customers want, but all too often don’t get around asking their opinion.Get the customers involved.

Laboratorians think their work is all about
accuracy and precision.Those are
important but so is customer experience.Many complaints result from rudeness
and indifference.

I talked about on-line
surveys, and that if you are going to do them, make sure you do them right;
short, simple, if possible on a continuous basis.Don’t intrude on your customer’s time,
effort, and patience, and generosity.

No conference/workshop goes
off perfectly.One of our speakers
decided to back out 4 days before the event (Whata Jerk!!).One person was annoyed because the lunch did
not accommodate vegetarians well (she was probably right; lots of sandwiches,
but only about 10 percent were vegetarian.Our mistake).But on the whole, people
found the day worthwhile and well spent.There were a few who said the meeting was too short, but none that said
it was too long.I interpret that as a
positive!

In our own on-line survey (about
35% of participants responding) they rated their program satisfaction high
(mean 85% and median 90%).

For those with interest in the
topic, there is a follow-up webinar on October 27th, and
presentations are available at www.POLQM.ca